the slaking.

i awake to gray sky and the sound of less birds than usual. the first good rain of the year is always a profoundly pleasing thing to me. the smell of course, but the change in light, the sounds, the viscosity of the air. the slaking of dry ground. it is only threatening presently, but perhaps that is enough. i await.

on another note, i offer a link here that i find quite amusing. perfect really. the craziest cat-lady ever. just amazing.

fall. blood. snow.

though faint, or even subtle beyond recognition, fall seems to have finally descended on northern california. i think. at the middle school, i overhear talk today that the president may postpone the turning of the clocks. is nothing sacred to this simple man in the big white house? i had selected a piece of a Jim Harrison poem to post, holding tightly the dear images of fall, but then i read this and the visual simply wouldn't leave.

"the doe shot in the back and just below the shoulder
has her heart and lungs blown out. in the last crazed
seconds she leaves a circle of blood on the snow.
an hour later we eat her still-warm liver for lunch,
fried in butter with onions. in the evening we roast
her loins, and drink two gallons of wine, reeling
drunken and yelling on the snow. Jon Jackson will
eat venison for a month, he has no job, food or
money, and his pump and well are frozen."

~Jim Harrison, from the poem titled: "A Year's Changes"

to clear the cobwebs

slow in arrival this fall is. though the wind rattles the aluminum windows, the sun is again out, and the temperatures demand short sleeves. the pumpkins in the yard seem to have stopped growing, perhaps in acknowledgement of these lead feet. a lazy sunday. the moving of furniture. guitar and coffee and photos hung on the wall. fried egg sandwiches for lunch. japanese for dinner. a warm cup of oolong to ease the tensions of soul. what tensions beg you? the songs that are slow in coming. the hands that seem to never understand how that damn piano works. the notes all crashing together and sounding the same. some days, the art we make was just to clear the cobwebs i suppose. to move the dirt a bit. digging in the soil.

indoor/outdoor beer

last night, ben, keri, and i sat on a wooden patio as the sky fell dark, eating indian food. the plastic chairs were strangely uncomfortable, but such things tend to fade. due to the painfully 'american' liquor laws, we were forced into choosing between consuming beer indoors, or not consuming beer outdoors. we concluded that we would sit outdoors, leaving the beer indoors, and walk in for the sips. while this made for a rather broken and epileptic dinner, it was wonderful nonetheless. it has been a week of such things. the praying mantis on the fence when i came home from a run, only the third i've seen in my life. the greek feta with tonight's salad that was painfully good. the best sour cream i've ever had. my ride to winters this afternoon, pulling in the last smells of a lingering summer as the wildgrasses die off and join the dirt. an award for the film from the newspaper. a pint of raspberry ice cream that keri and i will be eating in moments. flannel sheets with the cool october air. the existence of drawings of witches. pumpkins in my backyard, small as they may be.

the apathy and the pathos and the mean ugly witch

today, sitting in a classroom at the highschool i drew witches, and pondered this problem with rampant apathy. how is it, that a group of kids in period two can be so curious and filled with inquisition, while the next thirty kids who stumble in seem as though life is a dark and miserable place? what amazes me most amongst the latter group, is the utter lack of interest in anything...not only are they disinterested in the film {which was actually rather interesting by the opinions of most, as it dealt with the rampant fear-mongering present in present day media} but they seem disinterested in their peers, music, me, their teacher, everything. i'm still rather perplexed by this. so much so, that i find myself feeling rather depressed by their lack of curiosity, and the black cloud that seems to follow them, floating gracelessly overhead. they didn't even express any real interest in what the weekend was to bring. can life outside of the classroom really be that dull?

but alas, i should somehow drop their woes, whatever they may be, and focus on the pathos of the few who thanked me for being there today...several in each class. the two girls, who followed me out at the end of the day, telling me that much to the chagrin of their parents, one wants to paint and draw and the other wants to write. i suppose in some way, if i can effect even two of these people out there, that i have done my job, for in some way teaching is just a matter of guiding people to their own hearts. if an artist you believe yourself to be, i will push you and push you and push you, for there is only sadness in trying to escape such a plight. if it is in you, run to it with reckless abandon. i guess i grow frustrated by the apathy, because the stone walls surrounding their innermost desires seem impenetrable.

so i draw witches. a series of them, of which there will be more. indeed. i ride my bike home, wondering if fall will ever arrive, for the names of the seasons mean little without the change of air and the light. i come home and record christian's drum kit, which he left at my house some time ago, a fact that keri bemoans. i long for a beer, and the shadows of a windy and cold evening. i listen to the neighbor's dog howl, crying out his lonely sorrows. i throw a cookie over the fence. i turn on the stereo, and hear the room flood. sigur ros again. the delicate muse whom i can't stop loving, whose taste never really leaves the mouth. e....sai...ooooooo.

the failure of education, as stated by a one mr. kiefer.

having recently spent much time {most of my days} in various classrooms, attempting to instill some degree of curiosity and lust for learning in people younger than me, i find myself quite interested in the debate happening over at christian's website. what is happening to our culture and the general apathy that exists on so many levels? as my grandfather would have said, perhaps we are headed for hell in a handbasket sooner than we think. while i'm too tired and frankly too busy to write more on the matter presently, it is a worthwhile read.

six minutes

an old journal entry. july. the completion of another book from richard russo, the worst of his yet {nobody's fool}. the return home from the film festival replete with the strangeness of my photo on the front page of the paper, dancing on a streetcorner. a lingering flu. back to work, with the often feeble attempts of quieting middle school children. my first day of class in ten years, from which i walked out in under three minutes, completely incapable of taking the 'music theory placement exam,' which might as well have been written in chinese. i guess i must begin my climb up this ladder, quite a bit lower than i expected, which is amazingly humbling an overwhelming. saturday. work to be done. guitar parts to record. and strange noises. a lack of time, to do all of the necessary things. a lack of money. an abundance of joy. and snot, trying rather successfully to escape from my nose. drip, drip, drip. the onset of fall. the clock moves. 10:30 i must begin. six minutes.